Little God

7

“Love,”

Melis wrapped his legs around Antero’s waist and put his lips to his jaw, caught in this dream, “Love, don’t make me wait.”

It didn’t hurt, though whether that was from his husband’s careful attentions or Melis’ desire to receive his cock, Melis didn’t know, or care.

Hands fit to his hips, to his thigh.

Antero’s worry for his discomfort only a small fraction of everything else within his heart as he pushed inside.

Their blood was the same, their breath. Antero froze above him, panting as he waited for a sign that Melis enjoyed this. Please, his heart said as it beat within Melis, as if Melis didn’t exist to take him like this. Melis was little and Antero was large, intensely so, or so it felt now, but the fit was tight, good. Perfect.

Melis realized he had a hand in Antero’s curls.

Antero was tense all over, muscles shivering the longer he was still.

So Melis exhaled and thought of all those gentle, soothing kisses to his stomach until his body remembered anticipation and not worry.

Then he rolled his hips as he’d been taught. His startled moan as he took Antero deeper was all it seemed to take to convince Antero to have him properly at last.

Melis tried to notice the wind, to distract himself with prayers of the broken-hearted, of the lonely, but what were those to Antero’s cock and his heartbeat and his mouth, or the muscles of his back beneath Melis’ hands? His pleasure, their pleasure, mingling.

Tight, Antero thought, spearing Melis on his cock and reveling in the hungry, pleading noises that were all Melis managed.

Tight, but I will ruin him.

He will want only me.

Antero thought that idea futile, wistful, even with lust flaring brighter and brighter through his veins.

Melis’ need was growing too, building until not even turning his face to the window and the cool sea air could keep pleasure from rising in him.

He dragged his hands over Antero’s skin, clawing to keep him near, close, deep, barely able to match his thrusts.

His thighs shook.

His skin itched with sweat, strange and sweet.

They were as close together as two souls could be, yet Antero could not sense desires so Melis opened his mouth to speak them, panting hot against the side of Antero’s throat with his divine voice. “My priest. My favorite. My husband. Mine.”

“Your wings.”

Antero’s voice was barely more than a growl, his hands briefly bruising and wonderfully tight.

“For this, I’d have you as you are.”

Fast as the trained warrior he was, he kneeled up and flipped them so he was sprawled on his back and Melis was gasping atop him. “Take,”

he instructed with heat, one hand on Melis’ thigh, the other at his hip.

“As a husband, but as a god.

Receive me and move as I showed you.

Take your pleasure.”

It would also be Antero’s pleasure.

The feelings within him were clear.

His voice was rough.

His cock remained hard and slick with oil.

Melis unfurled his wings and snapped them out to their full width, then tipped his head up to watch Antero’s eyes flutter closed.

Melis flushed hot to be displayed like this for only the moon and not Antero, so he whined for Antero instead as he guided Antero’s cock back inside him—a shocking thing, to have that sort of power.

All gods should know humbling embarrassment over slippery fingers, and then torturous, exquisite pleasure to accept another inside of them.

Antero’s cock had not changed but astride him like this, every single movement, every flutter of muscle within Melis reminded him that he was filled, and it was delicious and it was a torment.

Antero was flat beneath him, waiting, holding his hands lightly over Melis’ hips but not directing him.

Melis began to move, careful and slow with each motion, testing what felt best, what made Antero sigh or choke or say his name.

The third motion, up, then down, made him stop, shaking and wretched and trying not to come though Antero would have let him.

He tightened inside, helpless not to, and Antero gripped his hips hard.

Melis moved again without thought, no longer concerned with his approaching peak or his husband’s pained pleasure.

He threw his head back to moan to the ceiling, riding wildly, nearly bouncing in a way that would make him squirm again later to think of.

Squirm, delight and beg to do it again.

He had no divine dignity in this bed but what good was that compared to the glide inside him and the sounds his husband made?

Then Melis’ eyes were shut too, the better to feel the flex of stomach muscles as his husband pushed up, the shiver as Melis slid down to meet him, the breeze from his wings on their damp skin, the deep, internal beat of Antero’s heart.

His hands landed, feather-light, on Antero’s chest, then fell to the bed on either side of his ribs.

Antero’s palms were callused and human over his back, at his hips, hauling Melis to him with every controlled fall.

Melis dropped his head to whine, his teeth in his bottom lip.

He didn’t want it to end. He understood now. Desire unfulfilled could be beautiful.

“Love,”

he exclaimed finally, voice rising as he continued to cry it out, “Antero!”

Then pleasure found him whether he wanted it to or not.

He stuttered to a stop, Antero’s name in his mouth as he came, spilling over the hand Antero had put to his cock to drive him to it, his body tightening around Antero’s cock inside him.

Antero groaned, pained, one hand squeezing the damp skin of Melis’ hip over and over as he waited for Melis to stop shaking.

Finally, Melis opened his eyes.

Beneath him, his husband smiled to the air despite the shivering tension in his muscles.

He was entirely made of desire for this and for anything else Melis might do.

He was trust and need and pure happiness. He was love itself.

“Antero,”

Melis called softly, banishing any aches and pain within his own body so he could move again.

He was slow and careful.

The first roll of his hips made Antero moan and slide the hand wet with seed to Melis’ other hip to try to push deeper into him.

“Beloved, I want…”

“Please,”

Antero begged freely, unashamed.

Melis leaned down, stroking his beautiful face, touching his open mouth, thinking of kissing him but not allowing himself to indulge yet.

“I believe I understand teasing now,”

he observed.

He spread his knees wider, experimenting, and when Antero gripped him tightly again, he thought that good enough.

Antero ought to mewl too.

He didn’t squirm and delight over it as Melis did, but he wanted it.

“I am yours to ruin,”

Antero said breathlessly as if he knew Melis’ thoughts.

“Do not stop.”

“Mine,”

Melis agreed, “but not to ruin.”

He spent a moment basking in Antero’s desperation, overjoyed to give his husband the greater pleasure of desire delayed.

Then he resumed the deliberate motions of his hips.

They had the night, after all.

In the hour before dawn, when the envious moon passed out of sight but the sun hadn’t yet woken with a lazy stretch, the household of the king began to wake.

Today, I will ask to brush my lady’s hair.

I hope she will let me.

That’s a small thing to ask, and she won’t possibly know what it would mean to me.

“One more hour of sleep to make up for what I lost talking until midnight and drinking that wine with you.”

“One less cup of wine last night would have done us both better.”

Melis stood at the window, his head angled up to hear the stories brought to him by the wind, the rest of his attention on the slumbering figure in the bed behind him.

Antero slept on his stomach; his spread legs tangled in the blanket he’d pulled over himself at some point in the night.

There were marks on his back, bruises from the fingers of a god clawing at him in ecstasy.

He would have to explain those to others if Melis didn’t remove them.

Melis had spent much of the night considering it; he’d spare Antero any embarrassment, but he wasn’t certain Antero would be embarrassed.

He might just as easily walk the lengths of his palace and declare himself the favorite of Melis, and his people would know he had found some sort of beloved at last.

Not the one they had imagined for him, and a worrying one if they knew the tales of other gods and other mortals, which many of them certainly would.

Melis didn’t know how to reassure them without showing them that Antero had made Melis weak for him, that Antero was more than Melis’ equal.

He had instructed Melis exactly as he had promised to do.

He could not have been more suited to Melis.

The Fair-Shaped had undoubtedly been the one to see to that.

For some greater purpose or simply to make Melis happy, Melis could not say, but Melis was no one to be trifled with now. If the elders thought to use Antero or hurt him in any way, they would face Melis’ wrath.

A stirring from the bed drew his attention and he turned to watch Antero roll onto his back and scrub his hands over his face.

The noises outside the door to Antero’s chambers were not loud, but Antero must have been used to them, and to rising not long after his servants did.

Antero extended his arms in a long stretch only to freeze midmotion.

He swept a hungry, searching look around the bed, then the rest of the room before falling back onto the pillow with his eyes squeezed shut.

“Dreams again,”

he murmured, his hand to his mouth like a human stifling a scream.

Melis scooted forward with one last glance to the window to make sure the sun was not there to witness.

“I am here,”

he announced himself, not quite able to say husband.

Inexperienced Melis had been, but he knew that words said during moments of physical passion were not always true when the physical passion was over.

But Antero sat up and turned toward his voice all in one movement, then threw the blanket to the side.

Relief and cautious happiness emanated from him, turning Melis’ knees to water.

“Melis? You haven’t left?”

“Not yet,”

Melis informed him, hating the words.

He couldn’t allow disappointment to take hold of his beloved, so he stepped forward again, stopping at the foot of the bed.

“I have work to do, as you do.

Your household stirs. Your people will expect their king.”

Antero nodded, yet seemed to dismiss that at the same time.

“But you’ll return? Soon, if not tonight?”

Melis’ knees weakened further.

He briefly clung to a bedpost, smiling and silly. “Yes.”

He took a breath and then pushed himself back to standing.

“And I will keep returning, for as long as you wish me to.”

Antero scoffed, but it had more of the sound of a startled laugh.

“Whenever you like,”

he vowed without hesitation, “for as long as I live.”

Melis wanted to scoff too but kept it to himself. “Love,”

he pronounced the name the way it felt to him, another pearl on his tongue, “that might be for a very long time.”

As if Melis would ever allow Antero to die.

He couldn’t now anyway.

The All-Mother was wise indeed, wiser than many gave her credit for.

Desire was well enough, but Desire and Love together? No god could withstand that.

Antero, smart though he was, was a man just waking up from a night he’d thought a lovely dream.

He drew his brows together with some confusion.

“Desire Requited,”

Melis continued, so full of light that the sun would be shamed, “if anyone is ever so foolish as to try to be your enemy while you are still king here, tell them to consult an oracle before they strike against you so they can learn that to harm you is to harm me.

Or direct them to pray to me.

You are the favorite of Melis and it will be known.

Even if you decide you no longer want me,”

his voice broke there, although Antero was already shaking his head to repudiate the idea, “you will remain the other half of me.

Melis the Cruel will ensure they and their people will never desire anything again.

They will not eat.

They will not fuck. They will not love. They will rot in their beds and their city with them if they try to hurt you.”

Antero swallowed.

His dreams were a muddle of pride, arousal, and worry over unnamed people Melis would destroy for him.

Melis gazed upon him fondly.

“But you will tell me not to, for you are loving and compassionate.

You will temper me and teach me affection.

She crafted you well.”